


A Fluffernutter Sandwich (and Some Cashews)

by Lavender_Menace



Series: The Six [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ben's Literal Ghost is No Longer Haunting His Siblings, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Caring For Each Other, Food, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, Mentioned David "Dave" Katz, Mentioned Sissy/Vanya Hargreeves, No Incest, POV Vanya Hargreeves, Sibling Bonding, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, The Metaphorical Ghost of Reginald Hargreeves Haunting His Children, The Simpsons References, Unhealthy Sibling Relationships, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, ben is dead, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26488513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavender_Menace/pseuds/Lavender_Menace
Summary: On the third of April 2019 Vanya runs into Klaus, twice.(I just really wanted Vanya and Klaus to cope together and bond okay?)
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: The Six [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1925680
Comments: 5
Kudos: 196





	A Fluffernutter Sandwich (and Some Cashews)

**Author's Note:**

> did my father have a secret stash of cashews that none of his children were ever allowed to eat? maybe.  
> (you don't need to read the first part of the series to understand this fic, just assume that there's no Sparrow Academy and they're all just rattling around the mansion somewhere)

The day after their return to 2019 Vanya found Klaus sitting cross legged on the kitchen table, bare feet pulled up under a long black skirt. He wore a large green flannel—one that she was sure at one point belonged to her—open, exposing the strange intricate tattoo that covered his torso. In front of him was a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, cut into four little triangles. 

“Hey.” She murmured, pulling out a chair and sitting near to her brother. In the dim light she could see that he was covered in goosebumps and wondered why he didn't button up his— _ her _ —shirt.

“Hey.” Klaus responded, voice distant. His eyes were trained on open air just beside the refrigerator and Vanya made the conscious decision not to ask what he was looking at. Instead she reached a daring hand forward and removed the first quarter of the sandwich off of its plate and took a small bite. 

It was too sweet. Absolutely the kind of recipe that only a child would come up with. She swallowed and took another bite.

"Rude." Klaus muttered.

“I’m hungry.” 

None of them had had a real meal yesterday. They’d gone from hot chocolate to straight liquor to bed, and Vanya had awoken hungover and ravenous. As she looked at Klaus she wondered if he’d slept at all. Left alone in his childhood bedroom he could have gotten up to anything, she knew that he’d hidden drugs in there as a teenager that their mother had never been completely able to find and clean out. 

Klaus didn’t look high. He just looked tired and stressed and hollow. 

She wondered if the strange dull look in his eyes was grief. _ She _ didn't feel dull, the sudden disappearance of Ben was a sharp ache in her chest. The first time around she'd been too drugged to really grieve for Ben—or Five for that matter—but now the loss felt inescapable and profound. 

Even when he'd been under the influence Klaus had always been so emotional, so intense. To see him so quiet and worn was eerie.

As Vanya chewed on her pilfered sandwich Klaus slowly picked up his own quarter and took a small bite, his eyes finally focusing. The portions are not cut perfectly evenly in the way that Vanya had done over and over again for years. Two of the pieces are smaller while the other two are larger, the bread isn’t lined up with itself properly and the marshmallow distribution is way off. Altogether it’s a terrible sandwich. They eat it anyway. 

With her free hand she reached up and grasped Klaus’ right  _ hello _ . He squeezed back and didn’t let go.

Eventually Mom danced cheerfully into the kitchen. The two of them said nothing as she tied her apron and set to frying rashes of bacon and no less than two dozen eggs. 

As their mother cooked Vanya watched her siblings file in one by one. Five looked as though he'd been awake for hours, his hair was perfectly combed and his uniform pressed. Next was Diego who'd obviously just come back from a run. Allison and Luther arrived together, close but not touching. Allison's eyes were puffy as though she'd spent the night crying, her right hand rested over her wedding ring, twisting the simple golden band on her finger. Beside her Luther looked tired and frustrated. 

“Get off the table Klaus.” Luther said, pulling out his habitual chair near the head of the table. He’d been better in the last week that they’d interacted but Vanya could hear his patented ‘leader voice’ making its return. She scowled, surprised by the rush of irritation as him for attempting to take the lead. Just over a month ago she would have been far too numb to react to such a thing but now it seemed like every emotion that she felt was amplified, as if her psyche was trying to make up for years of chemical restraint. 

Klaus moved without protest, slipping off the table to land beside Vanya, his bony hand still clasping hers. He was so cold and looked so tired that Vanya briefly considered slamming their sandwich plate on the table and knocking Luther across the room. It was a bad idea and she immediately decided against it, instead opening her mouth to chastise Luther-

Five beat her to it.

“Lay off Luther, you don’t get to boss him around like that.”

“He shouldn’t be sitting up there, we eat off that table!”

"You could have just asked him though." It's not as though Diego is in any place to tell Luther off for being rude to Klaus, but it's typical of him to challenge Luther. 

As their mother served breakfast and the kitchen devolved into a shouting match Vanya felt Klaus's cold hand pull from hers as he slipped out the door. 

She didn't follow.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Vanya didn't see Klaus again until later that afternoon.

She'd pulled a canister of cashews from behind the bar—Reginald had never let her eat them growing up, but she knew where they were—for a snack and had planned to curl up in one of the Academy's less-dour sitting rooms for a well deserved Simpsons marathon. 

Vanya ran into Klaus instead.

When she'd arrived at the preferred sitting room Vanya found that it housed one old fashioned television, one cabinet full of dusty DVDs, one ostentatious couch, a few pieces of ancient furniture, a soft colorful rug, and her brother. 

Klaus sat cross legged on the center of the rug, staring blankly at the cabinet, his palms up  _ hello goodbye _ . From her vantage point from the door he seemed peaceful if somewhat blank. 

It was the silence that unnerved her. She had once again found her famously loud, clingy, manic brother sitting still and silent, alone. 

"Klaus?" She called out, her socks left indents in the carpet as she slowly stepped into the room. From his place on the floor her brother blinked slowly, coming back into awareness with a certain gentleness, as though he was waking up.

"Oh, hey Van." He smiled, reaching up a hand  _ goodbye _ to push hair away from his face. He was still wearing her shirt. At some point he had finally buttened it up and the garment hung from his narrow shoulders like a potato sack.

It looked like that when she wore it too, but she was used to seeing herself drowned in flannel. 

Vanya remembered all of the times that Allison had yelled at him for stealing her clothes. Klaus had been shameless, rooting around in his siblings room for anything that caught his fancy. Eventually he'd even begun selling the things that he stole for drugs, he hadn't stopped until Ben's death—first death?—and Vanya suspected that that had more to do with the fact that he'd left home less than a week after the funeral than any sudden respect for other people’s private property. 

But he’d rarely stolen from Vanya. At the time she’d attributed it to her simply being too boring and forgettable to bother stealing from, but in her more morose moments she’d wondered if Klaus pitied her. She’d never asked one way or another.

She sat down in front of him on the rug, cross-legged and knee to knee.

“Hey.”

They sat there for a moment, taking each other in. It dawned on Vanya that she couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a real one on one conversation—let alone one where Klaus had been sober—and he seemed sober now. 

“What-” She stopped, took a steadying breath and gentled herself. “What were you doing?”

“Meditating,” Klaus looked wary, as though he expected Vanya to mock him. “When I got sober back in 1960 I needed to find a way to control the ghosts, because otherwise I would have lost my mind.”

Vanya nodded, listening. She was currently in the process of learning to control her powers herself and although she’d barely started the process had already proved extremely stressful. More than once since regaining her memory she’d wondered if everything would have been easier and safer if she simply decided to start taking her pills again. For the first time she’d realized that she was beginning to understand Klaus.

The most dangerous and scary thing in her life had a clear off-switch. All that she’d have to do is start taking her medicine again. 

The both of them had spent the majority of their lives drugged in order to escape devastating super powers that neither of them understood. 

“So Ben and I started practicing, I learned that I could kind of mute them? If I tried hard enough?” He looked helpless, glancing around at the corners of the room, once again searching for someone who wasn’t there. “And if I concentrate  _ really _ hard I can kind of push them away, not like out of sight or anything, but enough to give me some space.”

“That’s great Klaus.” She hoped that she looked genuine. She was proud of him, really. It was just that imagining Klaus and Ben alone, trying to survive and get  _ better  _ in a completely alien situation, was kind of terrifying. 

“It sort of feels like I can find the edge, where they connect to our world... and then manipulate that?” Klaus’ tone implied that he wasn’t very sure of himself. Vanya could relate; she didn’t understand her powers either. “Meditating helps.” 

He shrugged, looking down at the rug, his palms still faced the ceiling. Vanya twitched slightly, realizing that she should probably respond. Verbally. 

“Did I interrupt you?” She said, keeping her posture open the way she’d tried to learn years ago in therapy. 

“No,” Klaus was still looking down, putting her manufactured body language to waste. “It’s okay, I wasn’t really getting anywhere today.” 

His hands turned, Vanya watched as he traced a pattern into the carpet  _ goodbye _ . 

They’d said a lot of goodbyes lately. 

Some part of her wondered what Sissy and Harlan were doing right now, another part logically knew that Sissy was either old or dead, and that Harlan would be older than her. 

Klaus still wore a set of dog tags with someone else’s name. 

Ben had been dead for nearly two decades. Ben had been dead for nearly two days.

“I was going to watch The Simpsons.” She said, feeling slightly ridiculous. The words were abrupt and too loud for the quiet sitting room, but they seemed to startle Klaus from his morose trance-like state. “Do you want to join me?”

She still felt ridiculous, but the feeling was tempered with something like pride as she watched Klaus slowly come back to life before her eyes. It wasn’t a permanent fix for anything, but there was light in his eyes. 

In a moment of clarity Vanya realized that she was proud of him, for still trying despite everything. 

She realized that she was proud of herself too.

“Yeah.” He said, picking himself up and holding out a hand to help her stand. “Yeah that sounds good.

-*-*-*-*-*-

They sat together on the couch, watching old cartoons through the dusty ancient television and eating their father’s cashews. As the night wore on Klaus rested his head on her shoulder and dozed, chuckling occasionally, usually at Bart’s lines. Vanya let him.

As a child she would have killed for that kind of closeness, the casual intimacy that Klaus had probably given thousands of strangers. Reginald had so successfully isolated her from her siblings that touching them had seemed unimaginable by the time that they’d been teenagers. The last family member besides their mother who had been comfortable touching Vanya had been Five.

It was possible that Klaus would have given her the close familial affection that she’d so profoundly craved if she’d ever found the courage to approach her siblings, but it was just as likely that it would have been painfully fleeting. Her brother’s attention span had never lasted very long. Luther called him flighty, Reginald had called him unreliable.

But Klaus had been the first sibling to volunteer to go with her to Sissy’s farm. He’d uncharacteristically volunteered to put himself into the line of fire for her, and Vanya wondered if she really knew her brother at all.

She wrapped an arm around his shoulders. 

“We should dress up as Bart and Lisa for Halloween.” He murmured at one point, obviously half asleep.

“Yeah?” Vanya asked, continuing to gaze at the screen.

“Yeah, it’d be great. Luther and Allison can be Homer and Marge…” Klaus yawned, cutting himself off. “Five could be Grandpa Simpson—Abe or whatever.”

Vanya laughed

“Who would Diego be then?” She asked. Klaus pondered for a moment, shifting before looking at her with a smug grin.

“Diego could be Maggie.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed watching the simpsons as a child, it's a millennial nostalgia mood


End file.
